Victorian Era Women's Fashions

I grew up in a time where there were plenty of catalogs lying around the house. Mostly, Sears and JC Penney were the common ones but we had a few others. These were a great source of entertainment for the whole family. Little boys could see the new toys, little girls could dream of their ideal wedding dress, Dad could find that favorite tool and Mom could either dream about upgrading her appliances or trying a new fashion. Our neighbor, believe it or not, still had an outhouse and you could always find a catalog laying in there. In later years, people read the catalogs just like we have reading material in bathrooms today. In the older days, there was no toilet paper and the pages were ripped out as needed. These old catalog depictions in this site, depict times when none of us were around. You can browse through these photos wondering how you would look in these clothes or imagine how uncomfortable the people that actually wore them were! I hope you enjoy this and leave me TONS of comments.

Thank you for visiting.

Benjamin Franklin has been attributed to many inventions and things that we use daily but did you know that he actually invented "mail order?"

Franklin invented the first catalog, which sold educational and scientific books. With his books, he also developed the first guarantee known to mail order. He said that the purchaser would be guaranteed a product by mail, that would be as good as if Franklin were there to give it to you himself!

It wasn't until over 100 years later that others, such as Aaron Montgomery ward developed the catalogues that we see today.

With his invention, Franklin can be credited with the hundreds of $billions that are purchased today using catalogues and mail order through online merchants. More importantly, his meager mail order catalog has resulted in a growth today, of almost 11 million jobs that are related to advertising for mail order business.

Creative Commons Photo Credit